Louisiana Man Sentenced for Nooses Targeting ‘Jena Six’ Marchers

- Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and Donald W. Washington, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, today announced that Jeremiah Munsen, 19, of Pineville, La., was sentenced to four months in prison for his role in using nooses to threaten marchers who participated in the “Jena Six” civil rights rally. In addition to the four-month prison term, Munsen received one year of supervised release and 125 hours of community service.

On Sept. 20, 2007, in an incident that garnered national media attention, Munsen and another person allegedly attached the nooses to the back of a pickup truck and repeatedly drove slowly and menacingly past a large group of African American individuals who had gathered at a bus depot in Alexandria, La., after attending the civil rights rally in Jena.

The defendant pleaded guilty April 25, 2008, admitting that he displayed two large, life-sized nooses from the back of his pickup truck with the intent to frighten and intimidate the demonstrators. He and the other person with him hung the nooses in a manner so as to be clearly visible to the gathered demonstrators, and Munsen then drove past the group two or three times while the other person glared out the window at the demonstrators. Munsen further admitted that he and the other person had previously discussed the Ku Klux Klan and how they thought the Klan would have responded to the rally in Jena, and he acknowledged that the Jena Six rally followed extensive public discussion regarding, among other things, the history of racial lynchings in the United States and the perception that a noose, when displayed in a racial context, constituted a symbol of racial violence.

“The defendant used a threatening and offensive tactic to intimidate peaceful civil rights marchers who were in Louisiana to rally against racial intolerance,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker. “The Civil Rights Division will continue to vigorously pursue racially motivated threats that violate federal law.”

“The defendant committed a federal hate crime by using a powerful symbol of hate to intimidate a group of interstate travelers because of their race,” said U.S Attorney Donald W. Washington. “It is a violation of federal law to intimidate, oppress, injure or threaten people because of their race and because those people are exercising and enjoying rights guaranteed and protected by the laws and Constitution of the United States. Our civil rights laws protect the civil rights of all Americans, and they emphasize the reality that we are all members of one particular race — the human race.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Alexandria Police Department investigated this case, which was prosecuted jointly by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Former La. police officer indicted in Taser death

MICHAEL KUNZELMAN (AP)

- A former police officer accused of repeatedly jolting a handcuffed man with a Taser before he died was indicted on a manslaughter charge Wednesday by a grand jury in central Louisiana.

The Winn Parish grand jury also indicted former Winnfield police officer Scott Nugent on a charge of malfeasance in office stemming from the Jan. 17 death of Baron Pikes, 21.

Pikes was shocked nine times with a 50,000-volt Taser as he was arrested on a drug possession warrant in January, authorities said. Winn Parish District Attorney Chris Nevils said Nugent broke the law when he “unnecessarily” used the Taser on Pikes multiple times and failed to get him medical attention “when it was apparent he needed it.”

“In a civilized society, abuse by those who are given great authority cannot be tolerated,” Nevils said in a statement.

Nugent, who is scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 21, faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of the manslaughter charge. The malfeasance charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Nugent was fired but is appealing his dismissal. Phillip Terrell, Nugent’s lawyer, has said his client followed department protocols and didn’t use excessive force.

After the panel’s decision, Terrell said the grand jury has only heard prosecutors’ side of the story. “It now comes time for us to be able to present our side of the story,” he said.

Since the grand jury’s decision Wednesday, Terrell said Nugent had surrendered to sheriff’s deputies and was booked on the two charges. He was released from jail after posting $45,000 bond, Terrell said.

The parish’s coroner, Dr. Randolph Williams, ruled in June that Pikes’ death was a homicide. Williams said he consulted with two other coroners, and both agreed that Pikes died of cardiac arrest caused by the Taser shocks.

Terrell disagreed with the coroner’s conclusion but said he hasn’t pinpointed the cause of death. “We haven’t been allowed to see the autopsies yet,” he said.

Carol Powell Lexing, a lawyer for Pikes’ family, called the indictments “just one step toward justice.”

Anger over Pikes’ death has threatened to inflame racial tensions in Winnfield, where the population of roughly 5,800 is evenly divided between black and white residents. Pikes was black; Nugent is white.

The episode also has drawn comparisons to the so-called “Jena Six” case, which thrust a neighboring city in the national spotlight.

Winnfield is about 40 miles northwest of Jena, the site of a massive civil rights protest last year. Thousands of demonstrators gathered there to protest criminal cases against six black teenagers charged with beating a white student at a high school.

State Sen. Gerald Long, a Winnfield native and third cousin of legendary former Gov. Huey Long, expressed confidence that community leaders won’t allow the fallout from Pikes’ death to divide the city along racial lines.

“We pray that it will not become a spectacle comparable to what took place in Jena,” Long said. “Is it an explosive situation that can create a backlash? Sure, but that’s not what I see.”

Lawrence Spikes, a minister who ran unsuccessful campaigns for mayor of Winnfield in 2002 and 2006, said Pikes’ death reinforces his view that abuse of power is a persistent problem in the city.

“This has been going on for a while,” said Spikes, who is black. “It’s not just blacks being abused. It’s whites being abused, too.”

On Monday, the mother of Pikes’ 4-year-old son filed a wrongful-death suit in federal court against city officials, Nugent and Taser International. The suit accuses city officials of civil rights violations in Pikes’ death.

New Orleans cops cleared in bridge shooting during Katrina aftermath

MARY FOSTER (AP)

- A judge threw out murder and attempted murder charges Wednesday against seven New Orleans police officers accused of gunning down two men on a bridge in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

In quashing the indictments, District Judge Raymond Bigelow agreed with defense arguments that prosecutors violated state law by divulging secret grand jury testimony to a police officer who was a witness in the case.

“The violation is clear,” Bigelow said in making the ruling.

Survivors of the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings have said the officers fired at unarmed people crossing the Danziger Bridge to get food at a grocery store. Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and James Brissette, 19, were shot and killed by police; four other people were wounded.

The officers acknowledged shooting at people on the bridge, but said they did so only after taking fire.

Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. In its aftermath, levees broke, flooding 80 percent of New Orleans. Chaos gripped the city, and looting was reported in some areas. Rescuers said they thought gunfire was directed at them.

Later investigation revealed at least some of the shooting was by residents trapped by floodwater trying to attract the attention of rescue parties.

Survivors of the shooting said in civil suits that they were unarmed and ambushed by the officers, who jumped out of the back of a rental truck and started shooting.

Police officials have acknowledged the officers shot people from both sides of the bridge, but said they were shot at first.

Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius Jr., Officer Anthony Villavaso II and former Officer Robert Faulcon Jr. each faced first-degree murder and attempted murder charges in the case. Bigelow also threw out attempted first-degree murder charges against Officer Mike Hunter Jr. and Officer Robert Barrios and attempted second-degree murder charges against Officer Ignatius Hills.

Faulcon resigned from the police force; the other officers were assigned to desk duty after their indictment.

Bigelow also said Wednesday that prosecutors had wrongly instructed the grand jury, and that grand jury testimony by three of the officers was used against them improperly.

“It bordered on deliberate misuse of the law,” Bigelow said. He gave the district attorney’s office until Sept. 18 to decide if it would appeal.

Assistant District Attorney Robert White said his office would analyze the rulings and consider appealing. The office could also convene another grand jury to consider new charges against the officers.

“The ruling was not a total surprise,” White said.

The officers sat quietly on one side of the court room and did not visibly react to Bigelow’s ruling.

“We are very pleased for all the officers,” said Bruce Whittaker, the attorney for Hills. “Now these men can get back to doing the work they love.”

Madison’s brother said the family hoped the Justice Department would investigate the matter. Keva Landrum-Johnson, the interim district attorney, asked U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to have his civil rights division investigate case, according to a letter dated Aug. 8 that the family provided reporters.

“Our family today still feels that the ruling just proves again that the justice system here in New Orleans is still flawed,” said Dr. Romell Madison.

A message left after hours seeking comment on the letter wasn’t immediately returned by Justice Department staff in Washington.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten in New Orleans said he hadn’t been formally notified of Bigelow’s ruling and wouldn’t comment on it. Letten said he has told the Madison family that his office would not intervene while the district attorney’s office had an “active case ongoing.”

Bigelow ordered bracelets used to track the officers’ whereabouts removed but did not remove the bail each paid until the district attorney decides what to do.

Police spokesman Bob Young said the officers would return to regular jobs quickly, but he was not sure where they would be placed.

Members of the group Safe Streets, Strong Communities attended the hearing and demonstrated outside the courthouse after the ruling.

“The Danziger case is yet another example of a police department in crisis and a criminal justice system unwilling to keep them in check,” said Norris Henderson, co-director of the group.

The case was the latest in a series of high-profile, emotional criminal prosecutions tied to Katrina that have fizzled.

Last year a grand jury refused to charge a doctor and two nurses in connection with the deaths of four patients at a New Orleans hospital after the storm. A jury also returned a not-guilty verdict against the operators of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home where more than 30 residents died in the storm’s flooding.

ACLU says racial profiling in Louisiana continues

Associated Press

- Legislators should toughen a law passed in 2001 to prohibit racial profiling by Louisiana law enforcement agencies, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

“The law is not preventing racial profiling, or giving departments a way to track it and hold people accountable for it,” said Liza Grote, who led a study of three parishes from which the organization said it has received the greatest number of complaints of racial profiling. “There’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Grote is urging legislators to close a loophole in the law that makes it difficult to detect the practice. Under current law, arresting agencies are not required to record a suspect’s race if they have a policy against racial profiling. “We want them to see to it that law agencies collect racial data. It’s good for the agencies, and it’s good for the public,” she said.

Grote said the study, entitled “Unequal Under the Law” and released Wednesday, was conducted in the first three months of 2007, using arrest data from sheriff’s and police departments from St. Tammany, Avoyelles, and DeSoto parishes. Legislators have not yet seen the report.

Using demographics of communities and parishes taken from the U.S. Census, the ACLU determined the rate at which people of color were arrested compared to whites.

“In every town, city and parish examined, people of color were arrested at a higher rate than their representation in the population,” the report said.

The worst areas were Avoyelles Parish and the town of Bunkie, according to the study.

“In Bunkie, black people are 3.8 times as likely to get arrested as white people,” Grote said.

In DeSoto Parish, black people in Mansfield were more than twice as likely to be arrested than white people, the report said. With blacks making up 66 percent of the population in the parish, they comprised 89 percent of the arrests, the report showed.

Blacks make up 42 percent of the population in the three parishes, and 53 percent of the arrests.

In St. Tammany Parish, only 31 percent of the population is black, but they are 2.3 times more likely to be arrested than whites, according to the study.

Grote said she met with St. Tammany sheriff’s officials to discuss the report. Chuck Hughes, attorney for the department, disputes the charge that deputies are using racial profiling.

“There are two types of arrests — discretionary and nondiscretionary, where the officer has no say about arresting the person,” Hughes said. “If you lump those two together, it will skew the statistics, but does it show racial profiling? I suggest it does not.”

St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain has increased the number of black officers in his department from three, when he took over in 1996 to 60 now, Hughes noted.

Grote said the report had not yet been released to agencies in the other study parishes.

1st black La. Supreme Court justice dies at 84

MARY FOSTER, Associated Press

- Revius Ortique Jr., a former civil rights attorney who became the first black justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court, died June 22. He was 84.

Ortique died in Baton Rouge from complications with a stroke he suffered June 14, current Justice Kitty Kimbal told The Associated Press. Ortique and his wife moved to Louisiana’s capital after their New Orleans home was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

“I think he was one of the finest judges I every had the privilege to work with,”’ said Kimball, who took her seat on the court in 1992, one day before Ortique did. “I never knew anyone who did not like him. He exemplified the word gentleman.”

Ortique had to step down from the court in June 1994 when he turned 70, the state’s mandatory judicial retirement age.

As a civil rights attorney in the 1950s and ’60s, he led efforts in the state to integrate labor unions and represented black workers in lawsuits seeking pay equal to their white counterparts.

In 1958, Ortique was elected to the first of five terms as president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans. A year later, he was elected president of the National Bar Association, an association of black lawyers and judges. He served three terms as president of the Community Relations Council, a biracial group in New Orleans.

“I think many people do not know what his role was early in the civil rights movement,” said Sybil Morial, widow of New Orleans’ first black mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial, and mother of former Mayor Marc Morial.

“There were many factions then working for various things — boycotts for jobs, use of restrooms, lunch counters,” she said. “He was one of the negotiators for all the groups. He had credibility with both the white and black communities.”

The Times-Picayune reported June 22 that in the mid-1960s, when Ortique led the National Bar Association, he lobbied President Lyndon Johnson to appoint black judges to the federal bench. Johnson later nominated Thurgood Marshall, who became the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Justice Ortique was an inspiration to all Louisiana lawyers and judges,” said Criminal Court Judge Arthur Hunter. “Not just African-American lawyers and judges, but all lawyers and judges.”

He was appointed by five U.S. presidents to various commissions and boards, including a stint under President Clinton as an alternate U.S. delegate to the United Nations.

He was chairman for eight years of the New Orleans Aviation Board after being appointed by Mayor Marc Morial.

“He was a giant, a pioneer,” said Morial, now president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League. “Everywhere he served — as a lawyer, a judge, a Supreme Court justice — he did it with distinction.”

Ortique was born in New Orleans and served four years as an Army officer during World War II. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Dillard University, a master’s degree from Indiana University and a law degree from Southern University in 1956.

In 1978, the Louisiana Supreme Court appointed Ortique to a seat on the Civil District bench to complete the term of Adrian Duplantier, who was appointed to a federal district judgeship.

In 1979, he was elected to fill out the term of Oliver Carriere, who was retiring. He was re-elected, without opposition, in 1984, and he was elected chief judge two years later.

He is survived by his wife, Miriam Marie Victorianne Ortique, a daughter, Rhesa Marie McDonald; and three grandchildren.

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